A number of techniques are known to those of skill in the art for providing video content to users. Video content may include movies or television, music videos, animations, and the like. Publishers of video content may provide video content via a network, such as the Internet, by hosting video files on one or more computer servers. A user may navigate to a given web site, for example, and select a given item of video content for viewing, download to a local store, and/or purchase. In some cases, video content may be provided, such as from a news service, to various content providers. These content providers, in turn, may host video files that a user may view, download, or purchase. Additionally, individuals may re-publish video content either by sharing links to video files (such as through e-mail, instant messaging applications, personal web pages and weblogs, etc.) or by re-hosting the video files on other computer servers, e.g., links to a video file on a blog.
Along with the increased use of digital video recorders (DVRs) as well as digital cameras and similar devices with video recording capabilities, individuals may also publish their own video content and make such content accessible over networks such as the Internet. Additionally, a video hosting service provider may allow users to upload video content so that other users may view, share, and rate or review video content. Other individuals may likewise re-publish such video content. In some cases, re-published video content may be organized according to a different scheme than the original, and descriptive and editorial information may be modified. Thus, video content may be spread out across a large number of disparate sources, easily becoming disorganized.
A consumer of video content seeking particular type or item of video content may thus be faced with an overwhelming task, since video content may be stored in disparate locations and organized according to different schemes, with different descriptions and editorial content. Additionally, a consumer wishing to identify similar videos may either be forced to manually traverse an organized or unorganized collections of video content (possibly at many disparate web sites), or need to rely on the organization, description, and editorialization of video content by individuals not known to the consumer.
In order to overcome shortcomings and problems associated with existing apparatus and techniques, embodiments of the present invention provide methods and systems for facilitating search and retrieval of video content, organization of video content, and dynamic grouping of video content into one or more channels and one or more networks.